picture by NCinDC 

I’m a big fan of models or metaphors as a way to discuss complicated ideas.  Anytime you can give someone a visual representation for a complex idea you’re a lot more likely to get your point across.

One model that I stole ran across recently is called the 8 Pillars of a Profitable Enterprise.  As a business coach, I’m always trying to figure out ways to focus (and get my clients to focus) on what the real constraints to their business are.  “We don’t have enough customers.” might be a true statement and could be a problem, but as a business owner you don’t have control over your customers.  You have control over your marketing message, how you deliver your product, how you handle your customers during their transactions – all of which could lead to a result of not having enough customers.

Enter the 8 Pillars model.

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photo by padraic woods

One of the common themes I’m getting from business owners is that they are doing too much.  A major reason for their stress is that they’ve got too many balls in the air and they are constantly juggling priorities, commitments to themselves and other people and things they’d like to be doing.

As the business owner, you ultimately have responsibility for the overall success of your business, so it makes sense that you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, but the reality is that model isn’t sustainable in the long run and it may very well be causing you a lot of problems in the short run as well.

Considering all of that, what if you were to start doing less?

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photo by Harpersbizarre 

A few months ago I wrote about a fun story that Verne Milot shared with me on the importance of facing the tiger.  Verne is the owner of a coaching firm called Growth Associates in St. Catherine’s Canada (near Niagra) and a fellow coach in the PBCA.

Anyway, I recently had a chance to hear another great story from Verne – this time a case study about one of his clients and I thought he did a beautiful job illustrating a common problem business owners face and the innate value that a business coach can bring you.

The client in this case study owned a horse stable operation and although they were doing okay, they wanted to grow their revenue substantially and they were ready to try something different.  So they ended up getting in touch with Verne and he agreed to help them out.

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photo by rs-foto 

Not everyone wants to build a business that will grow.  There are people that absolutely love to work really long hours, prefer doing things the hard way and have no plans to ever sell their business or leave it in any shape for anyone else.

There are business owners that enjoy hiring new people for the same positions over and over again – they hate to delegate and they will not tolerate any new ideas.  Positive cash flow is for wimps and profitability isn’t at all important (which is good because they don’t have any).

If this even remotely describes you, then you will definitely want to check out the rest of this post – I’m sure you’ll pick up some tips that can further help you drive your business into the dirt!

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photo by Never Cool In School

There’s a lot going on with business owners these days – you’ve got the everyday challenges of just running your own business, you’ve got an economy that’s in the tank (and media outlets doing everything they can to make that as scary as possible) and you’ve got an election making a lot of noise and further distracting everyone.

But beyond all that, the problem I see with most business owners today is that they never take the time to look at the big picture.  They don’t have a focused view on where they’re going.

Let me know if you’ve ever heard this:

“That’s a great idea!  I just don’t know when I’ll get the time to do that!”

Or how about:

“I really should call my best customers, but I’m just too busy fighting fires!”

Now I’m all for hard work, but it doesn’t really matter how hard you work if you’re working on the wrong things.  And by wrong things, I’m talking about things that might be urgent but are unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

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